David Davis
In a land where tens of thousands of surveillance
cameras attest to claims by privacy advocates that
Britain
is the Western world’s most closely monitored society, the proposal has touched
raw nerves, compounding arguments that its citizens live under what critics call
an increasingly intrusive “nanny state.”
The debate in recent years has pitted those who
justify greater scrutiny by reference to threats of terrorism and organized
crime against those who cleave to more traditional notions of individual
privacy.
But the current proposal would go a step further,
raising the question of how security agencies can themselves keep track of a
proliferation of newer technologies like Skype, instant messaging and social
networking sites that permit instant communication outside more traditional
channels.
“What we do need to make sure is that, as technology
changes, we are able to maintain our current capability in this area,” a
spokesman for Prime Minister David Cameron said, speaking in return for
anonymity under departmental rules.
The Home Office said the new measures were vital to
provide police and security services with “communications data to investigate
serious crime and terrorism and to protect the public.”
Under the proposal, reported in
The Sunday Times of
London, a law to be introduced this year would empower the authorities to order
Internet companies to install hardware enabling the government’s monitoring
agency, Government Communications Headquarters, known as GCHQ, to examine
individual communications without a warrant.
A similar effort to enhance the authorities’ powers
was made by the previous Labour government in 2006, but it was abandoned after
ferocious opposition, including from the two parties that now form the coalition
government — the Conservatives, who are dominant, and the Liberal Democrats.
Currently, government eavesdroppers and the police
need a warrant to monitor specific communications.
But the new system would permit the authorities to
track communications data like “time, duration and dialing numbers of a phone
call or an e-mail address,” the Home Office said in a statement.
“It does not include the content of any phone call or
e-mail, and it is not the intention of the government to make changes to the
existing legal basis for the interception of communications,” the statement
said.
Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister and a Liberal
Democrat, defended the plan, saying he was “totally opposed to the idea of
governments’ reading people’s e-mails at will or creating a new central
government database.”
“The point is, we are not doing any of that and I
wouldn’t allow us to do any of that,” he said, arguing that the authorities
wanted to update “the rules which currently apply to mobile telephone calls to
allow the police and security services to go after terrorists and serious
criminals and updating that to apply to technology like Skype, which is
increasingly being used by people who want to make those calls and send those
e-mails.”
Opponents, like the Conservative lawmaker David Davis,
said the measures would give the authorities far greater powers to intrude into
areas that have traditionally been private.
“It is not focusing on terrorists or criminals,” Mr.
Davis said. “It is absolutely everybody. Historically, governments have been
kept out of our private lives. Our freedom and privacy has been protected by
using the courts, by saying, ‘If you want to intercept, if you want to look at
something, fine; if it is a terrorist or a criminal, go and ask a magistrate and
you’ll get your approval.’ You shouldn’t go beyond that in a decent, civilized
society, but that is what is being proposed.”
“This is an unnecessary extension of the ability of
the state to snoop on ordinary innocent people in vast numbers,” he said.
Malcolm Bruce, a Liberal Democrat member of
Parliament, said: “The problem we have had in the past is this information has
been leaked, lost, stolen. I think there would be very, very real concerns that
it could be open to all kinds of abuse.”
“We have had a situation where police have been
selling information to the media,” Mr. Bruce said, referring to testimony at a
judicial inquiry into news media ethics and practices. “I think we are in a
very, very dangerous situation if too much information is being passed around
unnecessarily.”
GCHQ is run in close collaboration with the National
Security Agency in the United States. It is one of three British intelligence
agencies, along with the domestic MI5 security unit and the overseas MI6 secret
intelligence service.
British officials have taken to warning that London
will be a potential target for terrorism when it hosts the Olympics this summer,
strengthening the case for enhanced powers to intercept communications. But
opponents of the proposed legislation are pointing out that the coalition came
into office promising to respect individual rights.
Nick Pickles, director of a privacy advocacy group
called
Big Brother Watch, said
“no amount of scare-mongering can hide the fact” that the planned law had been
attacked by lawmakers in all major parties. “The government has offered no
justification for what is unprecedented intrusion into our lives, nor explained
why promises made about civil liberties are being junked,” he said.
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